Better ~450$ Kill your console build?

Hey there, Just watched the recent kill your console build for ~450$ and it strikes me as odd that an APU is being used.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1J1Bs

 

I feel like a very similar CPU, with slightly slower ram, yet a dedicated 7950 is going to run circles around both a next gen console, and the current 450$ kill your console build.  As of right now after the MIR's this build is 443$ US.  There's 7$ you can use to buy a humble bundle and the AMD graphics card comes with the never settle bundle of games which is another 3-4 AAA titles for free...



Here's the text parts list in case things change:

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1J1Bs
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1J1Bs/by_merchant/
Benchmarks: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1J1Bs/benchmarks/


CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 750K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($79.98 @ Outlet PC)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-F2A55M-HD2 Micro ATX FM2 Motherboard  ($44.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Kingston Blu Red Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  ($48.96 @ NCIX US)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($59.98 @ Outlet PC)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card  ($179.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply  ($29.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $443.89
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2013-09-29 18:01 EDT-0400)

 

lol I was just doing this also :P

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/1J1Hi

Yeah, I decided to avoid the 4300 because it both costs more and requires a slightly more expensive motherboard.  All of that just to get L3 cache seemed like it didn't outweigh the upgrade that ~70$ could get you in the video card department.


edit: I should add that even your build with a 4300 + HD7700 would out perform the KYC 450$ build, while also maintaining upgrade routes.  My route is mostly dead end, as your ram slots are full, as are your pci x16 slots.

I didn't want to put a *super* cheap CPU to avoid future problems / bottlenecking.

Don't recall which Tek video it was but Logan was praising the APU's on their being decent quad cores, even if later upgrades paired them with higher end video cards ( basically a 4300 without the L3 and with a GPU core glued on ).  The current athlon's are just APU's with the gpu core disabled.

I guess I should check and see what the performance is on those chips before I enter the brainless valley of "I3 + uber video card". :)

I just don't feel comfortable with an APU or Athlon; If you ever go with a dedicated card with an APU, there's just unused potential because iGPU will be disabled which scares me D:

Also for price of 6800K + memory you can get a better CPU + cheaper memory.

I feel like you will spend money on something that will no longer be of use after a card upgrade.

Exactly why I was questioning the choice of an APU.  For the most part buying two separate items still gets you better performance, especially when you consider the requirement for more expensive and faster ram to really get the performance of the APU.